Carl Magee

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Carlton Cole "Carl" Magee was an American lawyer and publisher. He also patented the first parking meter.^{[citation needed]} He was born in Iowa.

In 1920, as owner of the Albuquerque Journal (then known as the Albuquerque Morning Journal), he called San Miguel County’s government the worst in the United States. A local judge, David Leahy, responded that Magee was a;

“lying, un-American political harlot, fatheaded imbecile remittance man, dirty cowardly reprobate, wicked, wanton, false, malicious, dishonest, corrupt, unscrupulous, and worse than the assassin of President McKinley.”

In 1925, the two men collided in a hotel and started a wild fistfight, reported the El Paso Times. Magee pulled a pistol and winged the judge once, killing John B. Lassater, an innocent bystander, with a second shot. He was acquitted of manslaughter.

Magee founded the Magee's Independent in 1922, which would change its name to the New Mexico State Tribune in 1923 and the current Albuquerque Tribune in 1933. He was the paper's editor until he was transferred to the Oklahoma City News.

Magee switched from Republican to Democrat and ran unsuccessfully for the United States Senate.

He is best known in journalism today for the E.W. Scripps Company motto, adopted from Dante for the Albuquerque Tribune and which is now carried by all Scripps chain newspapers: “Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way.”

Magee died in El Paso in 1944. [1]